Tonyblack wrote:We had a meet up in London on another board. We arranged to meet at the entrance to a certain platform at a London railway station. It wasn't until I got there (early) that I realised that I didn't know what any of them looked like and I only knew them by their screen names. There was a lot of milling around until someone plucked up the courage to ask if we were from that message board.

After that we posted a photo gallery on the board so we'd recognise each other on future meet ups.

Or you could have worn stickers on your jackets with your usernames on?

deldaisy wrote: AND AND AND Q brought me a SF book to cheer me up and ALSO a few sheets with it that outlined what has happened in the series of the book so I would know where the book fits in...... !!!!!! THANK YOU Q! That was SO sweet of you. (Seriously expected you to look like Matt Smith (because of the avatar ) Q, if your writing is in any form as good as your "quick synopsis of the book series" I can't wait to read your published books)

It was just an impulse I had last night. You'd been through a lot lately, I had a couple of surplus copies of A Civil Campaign, which is a romantic comedy (and science fiction intrigue story as well), and I thought, well, Del may need a laugh and maybe something new...and because that book is relatively late in the Vorkosigan Saga, I printed off a primer that I had written for my mother so that she could understand where the story had been.

BTW, my current avatar is NOT Matt Smith. It's Adrian Edmondson, specifically a screenshot of him as Eddie from Bottom. The sequence I got the screenshot from is this one. The moment is at about 49 seconds in. It's the look on Eddie's face that sells it. Very funny, but not for those who hate violent slapstick.

For the record, I look more like the mutant offspring of Gareth Thomas and Neil Gaiman.

deldaisy wrote:YES! We talked about Dr Who! Of course we did!

Uh, yeah. It had a certain inevitability. But we also discussed Discworld and other reading material.

Q wrote:BTW, my current avatar is NOT Matt Smith. It's Adrian Edmondson, specifically a screenshot of him as Eddie from Bottom. The sequence I got the screenshot from is this one. The moment is at about 49 seconds in. It's the look on Eddie's face that sells it. Very funny, but not for those who hate violent slapstick.

That skit is so wrong... but so funny

The Collective Brain: The synoptic serendipity that comes when interesting thoughts from interesting and interested people get together. And the whole is always more than the sum of its parts.

Q wrote:BTW, my current avatar is NOT Matt Smith. It's Adrian Edmondson, specifically a screenshot of him as Eddie from Bottom. The sequence I got the screenshot from is this one. The moment is at about 49 seconds in. It's the look on Eddie's face that sells it. Very funny, but not for those who hate violent slapstick.

That skit is so wrong... but so funny

You should see the rest of the episode. The reason why they're even playing chess in the first place is that their television got repossessed. And when Richie suggests playing chess, Eddie looks shifty. After all, the chess pieces (carved out of ivory and said to belong to the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo) are worth a lot of money, and Eddie has apparently been selling the pieces on the sly, so much so that there are only 5 white pieces left. That's why they use all those other objects on the chessboard. They even use frozen prawns 5 years past their expiry date as pawns.

One of the funniest moments in that sequence comes immediately after the clip. They should have kept it in that YouTube clip. While Eddie is smashing Richie's head with the fridge door, Eddie looks to the camera and smiles. He then says, "They say television encourages violence. Well, I'm smashing his face in, and we haven't got one!"

And immediately after that comes the punchline of the entire episode. I won't spoil it.

wow, don't think there's much left for me to say. Del and Q are equally lovely and I had a great time.

You know Tony, I only thought coming home about the lack of photos and this is a real shame as I could have taken one of the 45 minute queue at Max Brenners. It is possibly the worst venue I could have chosen for a meeting and if there were people out there who tried to come and got lost, I am really sorry.

Promise to try harder in future.

(I only had just put my jacket on before you came Del, I had been proudly showing the shirt off at regular intervals around the cafe ...)

And poor Q HAD to talk Dr Who as I had dragged my husband along who came in a Dalek t-shirt for comfort.

pandasthumb wrote:wow, don't think there's much left for me to say. Del and Q are equally lovely and I had a great time.

You know Tony, I only thought coming home about the lack of photos and this is a real shame as I could have taken one of the 45 minute queue at Max Brenners. It is possibly the worst venue I could have chosen for a meeting and if there were people out there who tried to come and got lost, I am really sorry.

Promise to try harder in future.

(I only had just put my jacket on before you came Del, I had been proudly showing the shirt off at regular intervals around the cafe ...)

And poor Q HAD to talk Dr Who as I had dragged my husband along who came in a Dalek t-shirt for comfort.

Like Q needed an excuse.

Never mind Panda, I'm sure the next one will be even better.

“Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions.” – Blaise Pascal